Your Playboy Magazine’s Centrefold Will Look Different Starting March 2016

Playboy magazine will not be publishing anymore pictures of fully nude women. This does not mean that it’s the end of the world. Playboy does have a couple of reasons for this, most of which are reader oriented. First of all, Playboy’s circulation has dropped from a whooping 5.6 million in 1975 to just 800,000 today. The reason for this, as quoted by Cory Jones, a top editor at Playboy, is :

“You’re now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it’s just passé at this juncture.”

Today the new Playboy wants to cater to “young employed males” in a hope that it will raise the sales of this brand name. Hugh Hefner has agreed to the changes suggested by CEO Scott Flanders and we will see these changes from the March 2016 publication of the magazine. What are the changes? Well, there are a couple of things that will remain the same. For example, it will still feature a Playmate of the Month along with provocative pictures of women, however, they are all going to be rated PG-13.

Playboy is looking to create an image of a “sex-positive female” and will reportedly feature the work of visual artists in order to cater to their new audience target, that is, young employed males who are drawn to art. After all, as Hugh Hefner famously wrote in his first editorial piece for Playboy, it is still all about “mixing up cocktails and an hors d’oeuvre or two, putting a little mood music on the phonograph, and inviting in a female acquaintance for a quiet discussion on Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex … ”

Have a look at some of the iconic Playboy covers through the years :

Marilyn Monroe on the first cover of Playboy in December 1953

November 1957

Actor Agnes Laurent in July 1958

June 1962 – the first time a bikini was seen on the cover

Darine Stern, in October 1971, was the first black woman to appear on the cover